


The Lines We've Crossed

by Sildae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 07:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9224699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sildae/pseuds/Sildae
Summary: Reunions aren't so bad. Remembering, though—that's where the trouble is. Set immediately after S2's Relics of the Old Republic.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally to tumblr; archiving to AO3.

_[ Captain Rex:_

_For two years, we fought as one in the War, at the head of an army against what we believed to be a rising evil— ]_

When Rex first boarded the Ghost, he’d left his handful of belongings behind on Seelos, half believing he’d be back baiting joopas within the week.

_[ —your sacrifice, and for that I owe you my life. But as you came to my aid on Mandalore, I ask that you join the fight—join me—once more. ]_

It wasn’t like he could be much of a soldier anymore, not with bones that creaked and joints that froze up whenever the monsoon season rolled across the western expanse. His whole body read like a map of scar tissue and bacta marks, bruised and sluggish after two decades of either dodging plasma or hoisting broken mechs up into their repair berths. Slinging for Big Bongo’s relatives hadn’t been much easier, but at least that had the element of the hunt.

The war had been long—the aftermath, longer.

_[ Captain Rex:_

_We both intimately know the nature of the galaxy’s new regime, and I believe we must fight again, this time for what we both know to be the truth, that the war we once fought has never really ended. And now— ]_

In his twenty eight years of life, he’d learned it was far easier to carry on, to know that some things existed only as half-truths and to leave them be.

He should’ve accepted that as fact, long ago—long before finding the broken, babbling man that had been Gregor, washed up along the docks at Comirean Station. Or Wolffe—bitter, angry, muttering over a stinking swill that had peeled the paint off Rex’s armor when the old commander struggled and the dirt-smudged glass flew.

It was a half-truth that they were soldiers. It was a half-truth that they’d fought a war, that they served an oath, that the truth was real.

That any of his brothers had ever really lived.

_[ Captain Rex:_

_You have never turned away from a challenge and I do not believe you will do so now. You know how much faith I have in you, in your abilities as both a captain of a fighting force and a leader to all those who are willing… ]_

No,  _no_. Rex shook his head. 

His brothers  _had_ lived—and kept living, even if those lives were witnessed only by another brother, or cut down too soon. It was enough.

It had always been enough.

_[ Within the last year, I have amassed a small coalition of able ships and willing crew, but it is not enough without a captain, without someone with as much skill and experience as you. ]_

Until it wasn’t.

Rex swiped at the datapad’s thick plas casing and forced his focus instead on the planet below, where Seelos hung pale and bright against the black of space, a repeat of too many worlds that he’d viewed through bridge viewscreens, or up through the magnetic field of a loading dock, klaxons blaring aroound him—or now, through the lone, narrow viewpane of an Alderaani blockade runner’s forward lounge. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have read the messages, after all.

But after a return trip by one of Ahsoka’s CR90s, Wolffe and Gregor were well stocked for the rest of the year and he’d seen the old walker’s backside, trundling off into the sunset. This time, he’d slung everything of his own into a bag while Ahsoka spent her time laughing with Gregor and examining their detailed maps of Seelos’ eastern ranges, where a few old mines might come in handy, once her network came by some industrial mechs. He had a few thoughts on those.

She’d even coaxed Wolffe into a real smile.

And Rex had grabbed the datapad.

_[ Rex:_

_I must ask you plainly: I am in desperate need of a trustworthy commander, one who understands both the Empire and the war that we will face. I know that person is you. You are my closest and most trusted friend. Please respond. ]_

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were hiding from me,” Ahsoka said from behind him.

Rex jerked around. He hadn’t even heard the door open. 

Ahsoka noticed and a sly smile tugged at one corner of her mouth—but she stayed at the doorway, arms folded across her torso, obviously waiting for an invitation.

“Who’s to say I’m not?” he said, and his voice was too gruff. He motioned her in with the datapad.

“What,” and that smile crooked up a little further as the door hissed shut behind her. “Don’t like my choice in crew?”

“You have a Seppie for a commander. No wonder your numbers were so bad.”

“Knew you’d catch that.”  She rounded the lounge’s broad round table, fingers brushing across it’s smooth surface. Sixteen years ago, she would’ve hopped onto the table and sat, legs swinging, while they’d discussed battle strategy. Or Temple life. Or his own cadet days. “He only saw active duty at Sisri.”

Rex grunted. Sisri was a rout on the Separatist side. “Maybe you do need me.”

“You always were a smart jogan.”

“Ooohoh, don’t start,” he said, waggling the datapad at her. “Still don’t think you needed to track me down halfway across the Outer Rim. You’ve managed enough without me.”

“We haven’t, actually.” She left the table behind and approached him, slow and steady, like he was a flight risk. “The Empire’s punched too many holes in my network, too many for me to fill. At this point, we have to make ourselves into a military presence if we’re going to stick around.”

“Risky.” Too risky. “A few blockade runners and outdated fighters aren’t going to do it.”

“Exactly.”

Huh. “Well.” Rex scratched at the back of his head, where at least a little hair still tried to grow. “Not sure I can dig up any old shipyards that the Empire doesn’t know about.”

“Maybe not.” Ahsoka came to a stop just a couple paces from him, chin tipped up just enough that he recognized the challenge. “But you’ve scraped together enough units to have some ideas.”

Which would mean feeling out potential sympathizers and avoiding Imperial plants. “Well, this sounding better by the minute.” 

Ahsoka’s smile reappeared, wider this time. Rex drank in that rare sight; he hadn’t seen that particular smile in a long time. It was nice. “Admit it, you just wanted someone around who could actually follow an order.”

“Now  _that’s_  not fair.”

“I’ve seen smugglers with better discipline.”

“What they lack in training and numbers, they make up for in enthusiasm.” Ahsoka tilted her montrals to one side, toward the viewpane and Seelos, where hours before, they’d slunk in a planetary shadow to avoid an Imperial destroyer. “The other side still has all the numbers.”

“Sounds like some things never change.”

Ahsoka smothered another laugh. “ _Roger, roger_.”

Rex groaned. He could go without ever hearing those words again. Although… “Might be better off if they were all tinnies.” At her raised brow-mark, he went on. “Find the right off button and you’d be set.”

“Just like—”

“—Kessel Station.” It was impossible to hold back a smile, especially when she looked at him like that.

Especially when he thought about what happened  _after_  Kessel Station.

They were silent for a long moment, the space between them companionable and easy, her face open, relaxed. He could still see the war’s tension in the pull of skin around her eyes, at the corners where laugh lines should’ve been; at the set of her jaw, too tight, too tense for the woman he’d known all those years ago.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. Her gaze dropped to the datapad in his hands. “But are you staying?”

“I’m aboard, aren’t I?” He swiped his thumb across the old datapad’s plas casing and dislodged a thin crust of sand, gritty against his skin. The datascreen itself was a bit dented and the blue had faded to a grainy gray after a couple decades. A fan of cracks running along one side where Gregor had dropped an entire turret on it during one memorable repair day. Deep sand had saved it, but it’d been a hell of a day digging it—and the turret—out.

He’d read all of them, that night on Seelos, hours after talks of tactics and after Wolffe had retreated in guilty silence. The two kids had finally nodded off where they sat and the Jedi had retreated to sulk in his own shuttle. Gregor and the Lasat had regaled each other late in the night with stories from the war, each of them prepping rifles and ammo charges.

Ten messages in total, sent over two years.

When the silence stretched for another minute, Ahsoka stepped closer. Too close. “Rex—”

Rex shook his head and she waited. “You don’t really need me here, Ahsoka. The best I could do still isn’t enough, not for all—” He gestured with the datapad. “—all this.”

“You underestimate yourself.”

“You overestimate the capabilities of an old man.”

“Technically, I’m older than you.”

Rex snorted a laugh. “Don’t start—you know that’s not how it works.”

“Isn’t it?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her, and she waited in silence, long enough that he shifted and dropped the datapad to the table.

“I haven’t forgotten Mandalore, Rex.” She wasn’t going to let it go. He should’ve known.

Rex shifted again. “It’s hard to forget your own men’s blasters firing at your head.”

“That, too.”

“Ahsoka—what happened on Mandalore…”

“‘Stays on Mandalore’?” One white mark ticked up above her eye. “I thought that was a Nal Hutta thing.”

“Maybe it should stay in the past.”

Another silence, not as comfortable this time.

“And after, too?”

Rex took a deep breath. “Ahsoka—”

She’d been an image—an imprint, an absolute truth—fixed in his brain across fields of broken men and broken worlds, to the firestorm of Order 66, to the endless wasteland of the war’s aftermath.

Then against his body and that tiny, tiny moment of soaring happiness.

And now…

On the table, the datapad’s screen faded, then blanked, from inactivity. He knew the words of that last message by heart, anyway.

_[ Rex:_

_Perhaps it is only peace you wish for, and so, I will leave you. But if at all you hear my words, know this. I need you. ]_

_I need you._

“I wasn’t planning on forgetting,” Ahsoka said. He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “But if you would prefer to leave it behind, I respect that.”

“Ahsoka, it’s not—”

Ahsoka held up one hand, still not done. “And that doesn’t change anything. If you want to go back, I understand.”

“I’m not exactly irreplaceable.”

“If that’s your choice, then.” Ahsoka reached for her wrist comm, but Rex covered her arm.

“No, I’m not leaving,” he said.

Ahsoka’s brow crinkled, but her hand dropped. “Why are you pushing this?”

“Because you knew all those bases, too, Ahsoka. You already knew every bit of information I gave that crew you sent.” He took a step forward; Ahsoka didn’t budge. He was close enough that he could smell the faint trace of oil and plasma on her skin, close enough that he could lean forward and kiss her. “You’re more than capable of leading those ships, but you don’t. Why?”  

She didn’t answer.

“This is really about that kid—about all of them, isn’t it?” Rex shook his head. “You’re not here to lead a rebellion. You’re only here to start it.”

She hesitated, and then another little half-smile appeared. “You know me well.”

But it still didn’t make sense. “Ahsoka, why won’t you do this for yourself? You were a Jedi, and the Empire—”

“Because that’s not how it works. You, of all people, know that.”

Just days ago, Rex had stared up at a belligerent man—whose hatred had hummed as strong as his lightsaber—but Gregor was only happy to serve a Jedi again. And Wolffe—he was still lost somewhere between his own shame and the cloying whispers that were always still…there.

It should never have been this way.

“Isn’t it?” Rex asked.

Ahsoka’s hand was on his chestplate. Without thinking, he lifted his hands to her shoulders, where cloth gave way to bare skin. “Rex, those months after Mandalore—even those last few weeks of the war—you knew what you were fighting for.” Her focus flicked up, to the scar on his head. “It didn’t matter if you had the whole picture, you knew enough. Here, right now, it’s the same. For you, for me—nothing’s changed. We  _know_ …”

_We know who did this. And how they did it._

She didn’t have to say it, but her hand slipped from his chest plate to the collar of his bodysuit.

_And so we fight._

Rex relented, felt his muscles relax against her touch. He slid one hand beneath a lek; it was warm, heavy—solid and real, real as her fingers along his neck. His skin prickled wherever she touched.

She broke away briefly to lift her wrist comm. “Commander Sato,” she said when it blinked green, “Return us to the fleet.”

Rex didn’t listen to the commander’s response; he was too busy folding Ahsoka against him, pressing his forehead to hers. Her headdress dug into his skin and he felt the rattling hum of the hyperdrive through both their bodies. It was too much—and that little part of him was still there, the one still lodged in his chest, somehow still open after too many years of emptiness, wide as Seelos’ deserts. “The messages—I’m sorry.”

“Wolffe told me. He apologized.”

 _Ah_. “He’s a good man.”

“He is.” Rex felt her hesitate, felt her body tense. “I meant what I said earlier. If you prefer this to be—”

“Strictly professional?” Rex leaned back just enough to meet her gaze. “Not sure I could go back to that.”

That little sly smile reappeared—the tension released—and her hand gripped the upper edge of his chestplate. “Good.”

And then she pulled him down just enough to meet his kiss.


End file.
